Riggwelter #26

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RIGGWELTER #26 OCTOBER 2019 ed. Amy Kinsman

The following works are copyrighted to their listed authors Š2019.

Riggwelter Press is copyrighted to Amy Kinsman Š2017.

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Foreword Eating breakfast How to Lose Your Keys The Happiness Counter downcast Rain Collector The Taxidermist MĂŞn-an-Tol Leonora Carrington Spiked My Dream Hare-woman Like Butter American Target Induction Sharing Hugh Grant love travels for work, sometimes Waiting Boat Three Units of Measurement The Ten Thousand Ghosts of Display The Facets of Patience Paranoid Architecture Time Machine The League There was no dance from which we were absent i keep thwarting the witch Lion Leaf Golden Poppies Host Wednesday A Terrible Fascination Sugar Daddy Prayer for my Fat Body Ligature Alternative Mother #6 Pope Joan The Waffle House Contributors

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Foreword

Welcome back for another issue of Riggwelter! This one is all about acting out – the things we’re not supposed to do, say or feel. The world demands we be appropriate and follow our assigned course and we just won’t do it. Rightly so! Here’s to the trailblazers, the whistle-blowers, the loudmouths, the won’t-be-told-no-ers and also to those who suffer in silence, the people that slipped through the gaps, the statistics, the cautionary tales. It’s not easy to live life off those iron rails.

If you haven’t seen already, Riggwelter’s Best of the Net selections for 2019 have been made. Congratulations and best of luck to Jason Harris, Kevin Latimer, Ariana D. Den Bleyker, Kaja Rae Lucas, Eloise CC Shepherd, Jeni De La O, Storey Clayton, Andrey Gritsman, Catherine Smith and Carleton J. Whaley. Be sure to check out their work in Riggwelter and elsewhere.

As always, many thanks to those without whom Riggwelter would not function: our wonderful reviews team, our submitters, our readers, our promoters. You make this whole endeavour meaningful – and also apologies on my behalf. Response times have slowed down significantly and look to be remaining at this speed as I can no longer maintain the swift turnaround times. Thank you for understanding.

Riggwelter will be back in November with another delicious issue, but for now, make yourself a drink, get comfortable and enjoy!

Amy Kinsman (Founding Editor)

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Eating breakfast

The orison of orange sun knives the membrane of night's horizon, surging ancient scythes of light.

In the kingdom by the sea, bonewhite beaches are strewn with garbage.

Night knits its archaic cage with cicada song.

A whippoorwill beaks a cigarette and brings it to his nest.

The window slices clear a distance between my sight and my seeing.

The rush of water soothes.

The wind howls at nothing all dark long.

The moon, a white fang, journeys to the sky's endwhich is a book turning to its first page.

The hour's shadow looms large.

Cereal pours into the landfill of you.

The bones of yesterday burn in your engine so you can sit in a box.

Daniel Warner

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How to Lose Your Keys

Start easy on yourself: something that has no designated place, can go any where, so rip down the rings, smash the bowls, tear your pockets away from your pants.

An aimless crow will find a roost — eventually you will hide your keys in the same place every day.

The problem then is you are not the same person every day, so make it harder on yourself: you’ve dreamt the map; you've learned the efficiency of nourished tinder, the exhale needed to combust the forest of your mind down to a man-made shortcut.

Do laps down the path of hating this body & the mind that rattles lonely inside it & even if your keys sit where you put them last night,

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your brain will shatter empty; your hands won’t know where to feel.

Sara Rose Lieto

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The Happiness Counter

On Monday morning, Natsuki hobbled over to her fridge to get out the chicken, egg and rice dish she’d cooked the night before. She stopped in front of the fridge’s sensor and tried to smile. Nothing happened. She raised her wrinkly fingers to the wrinkly corners of her mouth and prodded them upwards. Was something wrong with her face? Was she having a stroke? The fridge wouldn’t open, even when she tugged on the handle. She had some instant miso soup powder, though, so she boiled some water and ate that.

On Tuesday, Natsuki put on her horn-rimmed glasses and peered at the label above the fridge handle. It read: ‘Sony CSL (Computer Science Lab) Happiness Counter’. She’d never had any problems getting into the fridge before. Then again, it had been a long time ago that Jun had bought it for their apartment. At least a decade.

It had been on some kind of special offer.

On Wednesday, she stuck her face right in front of the sensor and tried to smile again. The muscles in her face felt worn like train tracks beneath her crumpled brownish tortoise skin. She tried to think about Jun, about the rare weekends when they’d got out of Tokyo and driven to Izu peninsula together, about the day she’d given birth to Aki, about the rice dish she’d made, oyakodon – parent-and-child, because it used both chicken and egg – about the silk kimono she’d worn at her and Jun’s wedding, still folded up and pressed between sheets of pink tissue paper in her wardrobe. The fridge stayed shut.

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On Thursday, she was woken by the sound of her stomach rumbling. On the far side of the fridge, she found a Sony CSL customer service helpline number in small black print. She typed the numbers into the oversized easy-to-use buttons of her phone and waited. Nothing: just a dialing tone. She tried again: same result. She even tried to smile at the receiver, in case it had a tiny Happiness Counter in it, but she could only manage a grimace. The last of the miso soup powder was gone.

On Friday, the fridge began to smell. The last time Aki had visited she’d stopped off at Tsukiji fish market on the way. She must have left some raw salmon in there. Natsuki shook the handle with all her strength but couldn’t even make the fridge wobble. She thought about trying to go outside to a 7/11, but it was ten floors down to the street. A note had come through her door last week, saying the lift would be out of order until further notice.

On Saturday, Natsuki tried to call Aki. She wasn’t due to come by again until next week. This time it did ring, but Aki didn’t pick up. Ah yes: she’d said she was going to be away somewhere. Maybe she’d driven down to Izu peninsula...? Natsuki felt very weak. It was all she could do to get from her bed to the fridge and back. Stairs were out of the question. She imagined herself swimming down them like a salmon.

On Sunday, Natsuki felt light-headed. Her vision had become glassy, so that the white lines of her fridge were blurred. It was strange: she didn’t even feel hungry as such. In fact, the fridge smelled so bad that she avoided the kitchen altogether. She was drinking lots of water instead, which meant she kept needing the toilet. The white outline of her toilet was blurry too, and it beeped when she sat down. The electronic display offered three temperature settings for the seat and an artificial

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flushing noise, to cover up any embarrassing natural ones. She wasn’t sure from whom.

On Monday, she didn’t leave bed.

On Tuesday, she didn’t leave bed.

On Wednesday morning, Aki let herself into the flat on her way to work. She’d had to walk up ten flights of stairs carrying two plastic bags stuffed full of onigiri rice balls, and she was in a bad mood. But she’d had a few missed calls, and mum was getting on a bit. The first thing she noticed, before she went through to the bedroom to check on Natsuki, was the stench. She went to the fridge with her hand over her mouth and nose, peered at the sensor above the handle and frowned. She removed her hand, just for a few seconds, and forced her mouth into a tight, professional smile.

There was a little click from the Happiness Counter, and the door of the fridge opened.

Sasha Ockenden

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downcast Matthew Yates

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Rain Collector

You are making your mom a salad at 3 o’clock in the morning.

She is asleep and did not ask for a salad, but you are pitting the olives and breaking apart the lettuce anyway.

In less than two hours, she will wake and get dressed, unload the dishwasher and pinch together the corners of your sheets to keep the day from falling apart.

You arrange each piece of lettuce carefully as if the leaves are spelling out a message: please come home

quickly and let dad be in a good mood while you are gone.

Salad in the fridge, you retreat back to bed— not yet realizing what you have created is almost entirely composed of water.

Mollie O’Leary

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The Taxidermist Your father handed down the skill and craft of a surrogate surgeon. And you, having survived the shells and the shovelled channels of Verdun, leaving behind the bodies you couldn’t assemble, sought solitude in a shack at Aughavanna.

Coursing men came with the torn materials of: hare, ferret, pheasant, snipe, and you brought them back as if conjured, transformed from the state of the bullet-stare, plying the art of a silhouette-seamstress with: stout-ruffer, trasher’s-knife, glover’s-needle, cape-stretcher. You crafted for them wire-wound skeletons, stuffed and mounted with cheviot wool and hung on a server. You cured the pelts with arsenic soap and combed their gowns until pristine, careful to hide your tacks and stiches. You fixed glass-polished eyes that refused to blink. Like Lazarus from the tomb, or the womb of Ovid they came back in the form that you envisaged.

Clifton Redmond

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Mên-an-Tol

My grandmother was a straight-thinking, serious woman. No story was told in jest.

They were warnings, omens told not to scare children, but to save them. She would tell me about them without a smile on her face, humming folk songs gravely, stroking my hair as I drifted into a dreamless slumber. But no one ever expects their bedtime stories to become reality.

“Do you want to hear a story, Arabella?”

I looked down at the girl in my passenger seat, hugging her plush dragon to her chest.

Her face tilted upwards, huge eyes staring.

“Yes, mama,” she smiled, the gesture not reaching those icy blue eyes.

Her lips widened into a grimace. Lank brown hair stuck to her cheeks, forever caked in a layer of grease and dirt. She’d been digging in the garden again that morning.

There were freckles on her nose that looked like specks of mud.

“There was once a beautiful woman who lived in Cornwall with her husband.”

“What were their names, mama?” she interrupted.

“Hush,” I chided. “Lucinda and Charles Grey lived in a little cottage by the sea.

They would sit out all night sometimes, watching the stars come out as the sun dipped low on the horizon. One night, the woman was given a gift.”

“What was it, mama?”

“A child.”

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I tried to stay focused on the road ahead. Rain beat at the windshield and my wipers were swiping as fast as they could, trying to clear away the running water so that I could see. I could see the ocean from this part of the motorway, below and far to my right.

“The couple waited eagerly for nine long months, and at last the child arrived.

She was a beautiful little girl with soft blonde hair and blue eyes.”

“Like mine, mama?” she raised her voice, and I cringed away from her raised palm when she tried to touch my face.

“I’m driving, Arabella, sit still!”

She settled back onto the seat but didn’t look away from my face.

“No,” I said, “not like yours. Your eyes are the colour of ice. Hers were as blue as the ocean in summer, warm and bright, with little rings of dark green around the iris.”

“Oh,” Arabella sighed.

I looked at her. Head tilted to one side, eyebrows pulled in, she almost looked innocent.

“Is that the end?” she asked.

“No, of course not. One day, the couple grew very ill.”

We were nearing the junction and I tried to make out lights in the wing mirrors as I prepared to turn off. I flicked on the indicator and slid into the left-hand lane.

“What happened, mama?”

I hushed her again, watching the road as I drove onto the roundabout. We were nowhere near the sea now, taking the second exit and swerving onto the narrow country lanes. The rain lightened up, blocked by a canopy of tree branches.

“Mama, please!” she urged.

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“Be patient!” I shouted, slowing as a van in the opposing lane sped towards us. I veered to the left, holding my breath as the driver swept close to my wing mirror.

After a few moments, Arabella began to sniffle. I took a deep breath before continuing my story, watching the road we drove down, almost there.

“They loved the child more than anything in the world, more than each other,” I said. “It’s a strong bond between a child and its parents. One that can never break.”

We passed a sign towards Penzance and I smiled, relieved to be close. Only a few more miles on the road and we’d be there. The exhaustion of the drive had begun to overwhelm me but I fought off the yawns for the rest of the journey.

“But that same night—the night the mother and father became ill—something crept in the shadows of Cornwall. It was soundless, unseen, as it neared the little cottage by the sea.

“They all slept, mother, father, and baby, as the thing slipped in through an unlatched window in the bathroom. It clung to the darkness, avoiding the glare of the hallway lamp and the bedside lights. The bedroom door creaked as it skulked. Neither Lucinda or Charles awoke at the noise.”

“What did it do?” Arabella whispered, gripping the toy dragon closer.

I turned onto Madron Road.

“It passed the couple’s bed, careful not to disturb their slumber, and approached the baby’s crib. There the little girl slept, tucked into her blanket tightly. It stroked a crooked black finger down her cheek and then pulled away the quilt. The door creaked again as something else emerged. The creature picked up the baby girl and fled with her before she could wake and weep for her mother and father.”

“It stole the baby?” Arabella asked.

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I stopped the car and turned off the ignition. We were parked on the edge of a clearing, just off the main road. The hills rose around us. I could hear the wind from inside the car, rain pelting the roof, far from the undercover of trees.

“It did,” I stopped, unclipped my seatbelt, and walked around the car to let her out of the passenger seat. “And in her place another one left a changeling.”

“What’s a changeling?” she asked, reaching her arms into the air so that I picked her up and settled her on my hip.

I pulled the drawstrings on her hood so that it stayed close to her head. Her face quickly became drenched, droplets running down her nose and chin. The few stray hairs still stuck to her cheeks and her eyelashes clumped. She wrapped her booted feet around my waist and tucked her dragon into her coat. Her eyes were focused on my face as I began walking.

“A changeling is a faerie child. The elders plant them in the place of a human child they take and let the human parents raise them. They devastate people, ruin their lives. All the while, the faeries prey on the human child, using them for god knows what.”

“But why?”

“Nobody knows why a faerie does what a faerie does,” I said, drawing on the wisdom my grandmother shared with me so long ago.

I reached the top, panting, pressing on against the harsh wind as it tried to force me backwards. They didn’t want me to bring her back to them. They didn’t want me to find my Arabella.

“If only Lucinda and Charles knew about Mên-an-Tol.” “What does that mean, mama?” Arabella shouted against the storm.

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I ignored her, closing in on the standing rocks. They rose majestically, steady despite the ferocity of the elements. It didn’t matter how many curses they threw at me as I approached, the pure magic of the good faeries would prevail.

“Mama, what does it mean?” the vile creature said again.

“Shut up,” I muttered.

I looked into those cold eyes and saw only hatred and evil.

“Mama?” she whimpered.

Pathetic creature.

“I’m not your mama!” I screamed.

I clutched the false girl under her arms and threw her down in front of the large, round stone, its centre a gaping hole. It depicted the other side of the clearing, somewhat clearer and calmer than on the side I stood.

“I’m scared, mama,” she began to cry.

Her hands were planted in the mud, her elbows dirty and wet.

“I want my baby back!” I shouted to the dark skies above me. “Please, bring her back to me!”

“Mama, please, I’m here!” the filthy thing grabbed at my ankle, pulling on my jeans.

I grabbed its wrists, picking it up and pushing it towards the rock. It fought, screaming, kicking me.

“You’ll be back in hell soon,” I spat.

I forced the body into a tight ball and thrust her at the hole. It was too big. It won’t go through.

“Come on!” I screamed, tears hot on my cheeks.

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The thing shrieked, an inhuman sound. Its fingers clawed at my cheeks and I felt it draw blood, tearing back my flesh. The thunder roared as I clutched its booted feet together and forced them through. The sky bellowed and the rain struck my face and hands like needles. The thing was waist deep in the gaping stone and I laughed as it struggled. Its face transformed into something monstrous, eyes as dark as hell, and it wailed like a strangled cat.

But suddenly it was a little girl again, elbows planted on either side of the rock, hands clutching at me, the face of my little Arabella turned up to me. I knelt in the mud, my knees frozen and stinging.

“Mama, please don’t do this,” she whimpered, her eyes watering.

“I’m not your fucking mama.”

Poppy Jennings

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Leonora Carrington Spiked My Dream James Knight

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Hare-woman ii

My ears are divided between forgetting and greeting

underfoot in the furrow the tilting wayside tree

leave these lawns a trail in the bushes

my patient steps belong to the wind

late rising knees shrivel

on this mound look close at distance

I hear the whistling trick of fences, walls circle my heels

unseasonable lichens lick with your eyes

stitch shared land sustained in doubt

now I come named, at this gateway everything begins

hurry the keystone hinge wrench at the window

moisture runs down tears are blurring

tethering my unmapped body to my eye's circumference

skin goes too deep what my claws know

another’s glance considers all the pieces rush apart

these bruising mysteries, the disgrace of love Jane Wheeler

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Like Butter

What she isn't

She isn't a misandrist. She really isn't. It's just that in her bedroom, tucked in a trick drawer, scribbled on narrow paper pilfered from the kitchen, there’s a list of all the ways she would like him to die.

Not kill him, mind. She doesn’t want to kill him. That would severely complicate things. She just wants him to conveniently die.

Many hours were spent compiling the list. Hours of contemplation and imagination. Hours researching the exact details her mind reached for with long, stretching neural fingertips. She is always thoughtful and precise when it comes to homework.

The list has blue gingham pigs with curlicue tails on it. Courtesy of her mother’s farmhouse-style kitchen.

The (Incomplete) List

Crushed by a three-ton Cadillac Escalade while changing its synthetic oil.

Mauled by a black bear in Northern Michigan while on a family vacation Botulism Thrown headfirst into the soft wall during an amateur’s race, when an orange 1975 Datsun, emblazoned with the number three, lost control.

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Electrocuted by a brand new 50-inch plasma TV purchased by a hefty tax refund Asthma attack Tumbling down a parking structure’s eight flights of filthy cement steps Mugged and knifed in a questionable part of the city Decapitation Evisceration Defenestration Beaten to a puddle of comeuppance by an endless list of enemies Exsanguinated in a pool of vampiric leeches Dysentery

A personal favorite

Dysentery is her favorite. There’s something both putrid and delicious in a man shitting himself to death. It’s the dishonor in it. The deserving humiliation for a man like that.

Things he can do

He is, without a doubt, a misogynist. It's as clear as brown glass. It's as known as amber liquid. It’s as expected as that stale, sweet cloud of alcohol wafting from his breath. It's as evident as that time he threw a table at her mother.

He is a wimpy ponytail.

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Remember that scene when Anne Shirley walked the ridge pole of the school house roof? He can do that. With 60 pounds of shingles slung over his back. And a busted ear drum. She never saw him wobble when he redid the entire barn roof last summer.

He can also convince her mother to fill his Playmate cooler with turkey sandwiches and Faygo sodas every day before heading out on the farm to do the various chores. Even as he screams at her, the words coming out just a little muffled, a little wet, as they slide through lips he can’t quite connect to all five senses.

Apparently, there is magic in those tremoring fingers. Sallow cheeks, sunken like ships, break open into puffs of smiles every now and then, and he will dance with her mother to Hank Williams in the dining room. Swaying, arm in arm, near the very table he once toppled.

Heeeeey, Good Looookin’. Whaaatcha’ got cooookin’?

Things she can do

Sometimes he gets so drunk he passes out for days on end. His sweaty, heaving, unconscious body has taught her that, in the interim, someone has to maintain the farm. So, she and her mother have become sinewy and handy through a lot of trial and error. However, one chore that is solely hers is feeding the livestock. Her mother is afraid of large animals.

She’s pretty sure her mother doesn’t note the irony.

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What she is

She is a wrathful child.

What she knows now is she can control no one but herself, and her mother has chosen. Every time her mother tells her things will be different, he promised he’s changed, can’t she see he’s changed. And the only changes she ever actually sees is the nettling of her heart stirred by the slurring pile of drivel parked at the kitchen table most mornings.

In the news recently, there is a report of a farmer who was knocked over by his hogs, then ceremoniously eaten by the 700-pound animals. They’re omnivorous and have been known to devour human flesh, if given the chance. They say a pig can go through human bones like butter.

And she tries a new tactic. Just like she's been starved for stability and safety, she decides to deprive the pigs. But they should be fine in a few days' time. He's usually coherent by then.

Three days ago, with him on another bender, she added an item to the list.

What he is

Heading outside to feed the livestock.

Lannie Stabile

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American Target Judith R. Robinson

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Induction

cold bed warm remedy let him come kindly hunt tender breathe deep-mouthed breathe breathe O monstrous beast wrapped in sweet fingers a delicious banquet take him carry him gently to my chamber my balm sweet sweet music a dulcet and heavenly sound with a low, submissive reverence please stay with me tonight please accept my heart natural cunning odd fear do obeisance win my love with soft low tongue make love tempting kisses I'll give instructions, Servingman please please taste, Servingman, O might man of such descent make me mad O come music music twenty caged nightingales sing soft sweet lustful bed love echoes from the hollow earth breath breath beguiled bleed weep blood and tears drawn sweet savors soft things O joy O dream lay here in this chamber say you were beaten and cheer in all obedience come to bed flesh and blood your blood the frenzy V.C. McCabe

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Sharing

“He slumps heavily on to the dirty damp floor. He is tired. More tired than he can ever remember. How did he get where he is right now? He cannot remember. He is completely naked. He is cold. He is tired………”

“Did I already say that?” The rest of the group fidget irritably. All eight of the others in the circle cross and re-cross their legs, wipe invisible specks of their trousers or skirts, anything they can think of to not watch Jon awkwardly try and remember. Jon’s mind has gone blank, he says as much to the rest. “My mind has gone blank. Sorry, guys. I know I do this is every time.” Jon falls silent, his head tilts forward in shame. This allows the others to raise their heads and look at him now that they cannot see his embarrassment. Judy takes a quick drink from what must be the lukewarm cup of coffee before clearing her throat to get everyone’s attention.

“Thank you, Jon, don’t worry about it. There is always next week.” She stops and then briefly glances around the room. Her gaze rests on each member of the circle in turn, and each of them averts their eyes at her gaze. She passes fully around the room and then sighs deeply before speaking once again. “Ok well then, that seems to be the finish of this evenings meeting. If no one has anything else to add we should call it a night?” Her eyebrows rise and she cocks her head at no one in particular as she waits for an answer, none is given.” She closes the open folder on her lap with a slap. “Ok, thank you all for coming and good night to you then.” The rest of the group quickly disperses with obvious relief until finally it is just Judy and Jon.

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She frowns when she notices that he is the only one left. She places the folder on the now empty chair to her right, the cup of coffee is long forgotten on the floor. “What can I do for you Jon?” She is sat directly across from him, the space in between feels cavernous. Jon meets her eyes. He feels guilty that he could not finish. “Sorry Judy for not finishing earlier, I really thought I had it this time. I…..er…..just wanted to say that to you.” He watches as she sighs as crosses her legs. What is it with everyone crossing their legs he wonders to himself. She sighs again before speaking. “Jon, I’m not sure your heart is in this. I’m sorry to be so blunt but if you cannot even speak about the event than how will you be able to replicate it?” She falls silent and waits for his answer.

This time it is his turn to fidget and cross and uncross his legs. A few seconds pass while he kills time. He clears his thought. “I know Judy. It’s just I’ve never really been a good public speaker……” He trails off. He is unsure how to continue. Judy watches as his flusters and decides to save him from himself, she has a soft spot for the lad. She has to remind herself that he is only young, he only has one kill under his belt after all. With some nurturing he could kill again but only with the help of her and the others in the group. She stands and walks slowly towards him, her high heeled shoes clip clopping as she walks. She sits carefully next to him and puts her hand on his shoulder.

Jon’s head returns to be slumped forward like the rest of his body. He feels ashamed at his weakness, especially in front of Judy, someone whom he has great respect for. Someone like her who has been killing for decades and not ever been caught. She is more than a mentor to him and the others. She is a legend. Her hand on his shoulder feels light but electric. She speaks softly to him. “Jon, there is no need to

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put this much pressure on yourself. You are not the only one in the group who has been struggle to recount one of their kills. You also aren’t the only first timer in here, you know all this don’t you. So, what is really wrong?” Jon nods only with her words until she is finished, he could cry but he would never show that kind of weakness in front of her.

Composing himself he tells her the truth. “It’s just…..well…..it’s just the others…..their kills are so much better than mine. Mine…well….I just don’t feel like it lives up to every ones else’s standards……” He falls silent again. She can see he is struggling so she gives his shoulder a tighter squeeze. “Jon, your kill was perfectly fine. The way you bludgeoned that naked man to death with a snow globe. That was simply brutal. It was brilliant. I couldn’t have been prouder.” She squeezes his shoulder again, he lifts his head and looks into her eyes. She sees fear, but also the beginnings of realisation that what she is saying is true. She continues. “Never tell the others this, but out of all the spur of the moment kills in this group yours in my favourite.”

Jon visibly brightens at her words. “Do you really mean that Judy?” She nods her head slowly. “I do Jon, it was beautiful brutality at its very best. I saw the infinite in those long slow powerful strikes. He never stood a chance.” His eyes well up, he told himself he would cry but hearing her say those words has brought it all out to the surface. He can only muster a few words. “Thank you Judy, it means a lot.” She squeezes his shoulder one more time and stands. “Not to worry Jon, there is always next week. Come on, let’s get a cup of coffee.”

Elliot Harper

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Or Could There Ever Be Rainbows In Midst of a Storm?

After Syrian Migration by Helen Zughaib Men and women wearing rainbows ready to ride waves as though they were clouds beneath a magic carpet hands raised they look in the same direction there must be a benevolent God guiding the fragile skiff to safety

only one face looks back making sure that instant is alive oblivious to thirst oblivious to hunger oblivious to sunburn oblivious to brine dripping over scorched skin as long as the boat is floating they stick together forming the same rainbow defying the tall waves the angry scum

only one face looks back making sure the scene is recorded Hedy Habra

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Hugh Grant

The discovery was made some time between the years 1895 and 1898 according to the account passed along to me .The man who found it was a tradesman in his small village, Lebel-sur-Quevillon, in the Nord-du-Quebec region of Canada. He was an avid walker, who liked to roam far and wide with his dog.

One day he came upon an enormous pit, round as a washbasin and very deep.

There was a fissure along the northern rim, and the man and his dog made their way to the bottom. The dog was the first to spot it, something triangular with a sharpened point poking out of the dirt. The man thought at first it was an arrowhead. The dog proceeded to scratch and paw, and the man, using a sharp stone dug in the dirt until the object was visible. Then he yanked with all his might to free it.

The object was hard as metal. The man tugged at the edges until it opened up.

The collated inner sheaves were hard as well, yet exceedingly thin and flexible. They could be turned exactly as pages could. Indeed, that is what they were: pages. Each was densely inscribed with shapes, specks and configured lines. He put the thing in his rucksack and carried it with him home. It was a novelty, a “peculiarity” he would often say. He placed it on a shelf in the parlor, and showed it to everyone who came to visit.

A friend of mine had gone to Quebec to attend an historians’ conference, staying in the grand old hotel, the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City. As he explained it, on a cool afternoon in September he was aimlessly strolling through a cobbled passageway near the hotel, when he encountered an elderly, by the looks of him, down-on-his-luck man with items for sale, strewn across a blanket on the sidewalk.

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What first caught his eye was an ancient issue of Life Magazine, a beaming JFK and a demure Jackie splashed across the cover. But next to it on the blanket was the “peculiar” object. He picked it up, saying to the man selling it, “I have no idea what this could be.”

“Neither do I,” the man answered him.

My friend looked inside the object, and realized it was a book of sorts, though made from unfamiliar materials. He came across several sheets of notebook paper tucked inside, covered in writing. He offered the seller a few Canadian dollars for it, and then took it back to the Chateau Frontenac.

In his room he began to read what was written in French on the pieces of paper. It was written by a descendant of the man who had found the object in Lebel-sur-Quevillon near the turn of the century. She explained how the object had been passed down through the family over the years, at first as an heirloom worthy of display, and then eventually stashed away by later descendants as junk, despite its peculiarity. Folded in with the notebook paper was a clipping from a newspaper published in Nord du Quebec, and dated March 14, 1998. The article reported the results of testing and analysis of dirt from a massive pit just beyond the village of Lebel-sur-Quevillon, which revealed that the crater had been created 400 million years earlier by a comet striking earth.

Not long after my friend returned to New Haven, he told me about the peculair thing he had bought in Quebec, saying it might be of particular interest to me as a mathematician with an interest in cryptology. He proposed handing it over to me in

33

order for me to take a crack at unlocking the language inscribed on the inner sheafs of the object. And I agreed.

Year after year, in whatever time I was able to spare, I studied the shapes and lines and symbols. At one point my friend asked me to lunch, and as we ate, he explained how he had taken small pieces of the object to an archaeologist at the university, who had proceeded to have them analyzed. Two intriguing things had been discovered.

First, the interior of the document, the pages so to speak, were made of alloys comprised of common elements. However, according to those who performed the testing, whatever process had been used to create the material was not known.

Secondly, on the outside part of the object they had found the presence of a synthetic known as Technetium, which occurred naturally only in a kind of star known as an AGB. The nearest of these was three hundred and sixty light years away.

My own breakthrough came after seven years when I finally established the pattern and codified an alphabet. There were only remnants, the object deteriorated over time, but what was left was dialogue, a dramatization, in which Oboe and Pendulum engaged in a back and forth. It was accompanied by occasional passages of description. For example:

Oboe

You could put what you know about the external geometry of objects into a thimble, and still have room for your genitalia.

Pendulum

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Pendulum then adds: I can’t help but notice that you use every opportunity available to refer to my genitalia.

Obviously, there were no discussions of algorithms for computer aided process engineering or grid computing in Nineteenth Century Quebec or elsewhere.

The brief descriptions seemed to set the story in a workplace. At one point Oboe says: I would never have you for a boss, to which Pendulum replies: But you’d have me in other ways?

There was more, but it would all lead to the same inescapable conclusion: What soon would become known to the world as the greatest discovery in the history of humankind was a romcom from a cosmic neighborhood three-hundred and sixty light years away, give or take a few.

Ken O’Steen

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love travels for work, sometimes

love rents my airbnb for the weekend but he’s too afraid to show. he sends his deputy instead, some chubby-cheeked Cupid who sets off the burglar alarm instead of just ringing the doorbell. i don’t think he’s ever seen a lesbian up close before. he clearly doesn’t know how to act with one as his host, even though technically, he’s the one who shot me in the first place. i tell him that. he flees into the bedroom. i call out that he can use my kitchen if he wants. he still won’t look at me without the protection of a scope. maybe he can feel the anger radiating off my outward-flipped claddagh, the half-written anguish spread across the disorganized dining room table. i watch love’s frazzled intern slip into the kitchen in socked feet, as if i won’t hear him without the suction-cup sounds of skin on tile. he didn’t come like love used to, wrapped in armor and armed with a list of talking points. he arrived a broke college kid with nothing but a pack of ramen that he’s now making in his own defendant’s microwave, and notes he’s read diligently only to discover that the reality is nothing like the classroom. i wonder if i’m the first heart he’s really gotten to mess with. i wonder if i should be honored or offended by the thought. love, the divorced parent, picks him up the next morning: a horn for an overture, a car hovering by the curb in fear of what will happen if i hear the crunch of tires on gravel. i know regardless. i part the curtains: the apprentice jogs on faded black sneakers and hops into the passenger’s seat; lands with a pensive glance that doesn’t quite capture me framed in the window. i realize as the car disappears from sight that he paid for seven nights but only stayed for one, and even then, barely: when i go to clean the bedroom, i find that he has left nothing, not even a wrinkle in the bedsheets or a crease in the carpet. it seems he could not exist here, in a place that’s been destroyed by his boss’s weapons.

M.P. Armstrong

36

Waiting Boat Karen Dennison

37

Three Units of Measurement

I. I know you love me, but it is simple ammunition to forget. Remember, I learned that love is as long as the battle lasts — this much — how loud our wounds yell, whether or not we can endure the burn a bullet leaves in the wake of its skim. Love, yes, I screamed a quiet army at you, weapons loaded with tequila & insecurity, my arms wide wings meant to signify the breadth of the dive I would take for you.

But how do we measure apologies? In the morning I prayed in the bathroom, asked the god in my lungs to breathe twice, but only if they truly wanted to live long enough to preen the aftermath of their casualties.

II. God still gets to be holy after they close their eyes to the byproduct of their artwork — remember, it was art at the beginning & it works to lose someone you love to violence, to bury a body with a painter’s hands after testing the edges of your wingspan against the storm.

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I forget if we decided on a storm shelter or wartime love epic. Remember, I can still indulge in the romance of huddling in the bathtub, the sky fireworks of lightning or flashes of combustion.

Still, a beautiful maze to descend through.

III. The next day always wakes us up.

We continue to land on the ground & I am a wooden frame, unbuilt, & you hold me up in the bed, pull out all the old nails, pluck the splinters from your wrists, prime the walls of me for beauty & then we get into the car, drive to the hardware store for paint — what color matches the bed frame? Should we have brought a photo?

Sara Rose Lieto

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The Ten Thousand Ghosts of Display

We’re very busy staring into space. Mallspace.

The custom belt buckles and engraved spatulas in the kiosk bear the insignias of all our losses, names that don’t need repeating.

We short circuit our own mistakes: Swansong Swarovski. Retail tinnitus.

The mall is a mine and we hold forth its quarry to twist in the fast light of the cosmos hiding in the fresh off-gassing of a polymer base-layer down jacket. Or a ghost. Or a spatial flow.

We slump down these corridors, faceted overlapping polygonal aspects of smoke. The mall is the void in the fluttering heart the way a glacier is a capture of the sky by the earth.

We are attuned to the sparrows in rafters, their poor songs, the dirge of deaf registers. What’s the endgame? The unimplicated, uninflected transit of the moon over acres of gridded asphalt?

Jennifer Metsker and Kendal Babl

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The Facets of Patience

Yeah, I know the structure. Testing our listening capacity. If we’re unable to speak then we listen better. They’re using it in Westminster. You’ve just been talking about yourself? Then I can go first. You should know that I’m not here because I’m looking for a partner. I’m actually attached to a Spec. My Psych told me it would be good for me to socialise in more structured environments. Apparently I’m not living my life to its greatest potential, loving something that isn’t able to give me individual love in return. Feel free to move on as there are plenty of others in the circle with green lights.

The Spec – she’s called Patience. I met her in Bloc. I know, you’re not supposed to date someone that lives in your section, but what do they expect? You pass one another in so many different states of being. See their kaleidoscopic nature. No, we don’t live there anymore. We progressed to the Secluded Facility. Both registered as female. Because of her high grades in Citizenship, Patience has an allowance of a weekly shift to male. I’m stuck with birth-allocation gender.

My light? I can’t transition from green because Patience won’t put us on the Commitment Track. She can’t. According to The Annal, her breed of Spec exists ‘to spread universal love and wisdom’. So, I am able to get love from her, but it isn’t unique to me and doesn’t increase incrementally with the more love I give to her, or the more of my time I spend with her.

Sure, I’d love another drink. This is what I had before. Just place your palm on the screen and it’ll come up. I saw a feature on this place in the Sphere. Oh, you did too. Yeah, it’s amazing. Better than the Sim, in fact, which is rare.

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Tonight? Patience has to charge. You know it’s at least eight hours. That won’t change, no matter what’s happening. The amount of time I’ve spent, staring at the blue glow that emits between her door and the floor.

How did I fall for a Spec? You’re not a journalist are you? Good. I don’t believe in love at first sight in the sense that you know that it is love, but that there exists from the moment you meet someone special a seed sown. Then that seed begins to sprout roots and if you let it, and feed it, and give it enough space to grow, that nature does its work. And that person becomes the centre of your forest. I’d say Patience became my centre a fair few weeks before I’d even imagined kissing her. Patience? She’s the most lifelike Spec you’ll ever meet. I did think she was a HomoSap initially. She was raised by an HS family, after all, so she’s developed a lot of our characteristics. And she’s programmed to age just like us. You know, living seventeen percent longer than our mothers. Sounds odd to say about a computer, but I realised Patience was to me when I noticed how she was so affected by the cosmos. I’d read somewhere that for a certain class of Spec, it’s about the reactivity of their chips. She didn’t come to work one day because it was a full moon.

We’re Guardians. She works in the neural unit with the other Specs and I work in the pedagogical. No, they still don’t let Specs have contact with kids before their third birthday, so she can’t get into my division. Do you know about what they do? The way it works is that Patience identifies the patterns of the world and then explains them to clients. She understands the natural sequencing. You know, the Divine Source.

When Patience interprets? She removes her scrubs and reveals her chest, which has such a shine to it that it acts like a mirror to whoever she’s facing. The

42

motive for her class of Spec is to ‘illuminate the highest good’. Me? The most she’s ever done for me is a mini-ceremony. I held my hand up to hers and above our fingers an image emerged. Symbol 35, The Loyal Heart. It’s a hologram of two owls, crowned and turned in to face one another. Their amber bodies created the shape of a heart above our hands. Above curled the words fidelty, loyalty and devotion.

You’ve heard the government talk of lowering the adult age from sixteen to fourteen within the next decade. Parents don’t have enough time to teach them everything they need to know, so that’s where I come in. I provide kids with the skills they need to live independently: cooking, cleaning, finance, employment. We’re looking to mobilse seventy percent more under the age of sixteen by 2036. I think it’s possible.

Oh yes, drinks. See, here’s what I had last time. You get your basic order of say, a margarita, for instance, then you select these icons to add to it. That’s lime; that’s pineapple; straws. That one’s got a strobe effect.

Patience’s brain, or at least the computer paneling that makes up her brain, develops extremely quickly once exposed to its environment. It learns how to act in order to achieve its purpose in the quickest and most effective way. This menu, for example, she would know how to use before even sitting down. She would have observed the other costumers at the tables as she walked in.

Consciousness? It depends. Do you differentiate between consciousness itself and something mimicking a conscious state? I personally don’t think there’s a difference. For me, I would say that she very much has a brain of her own though ‘whatever you want’ doesn’t make sense to her. She doesn’t want, she tells me, she just is.

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Did I say I have hope? I can’t remember. Hope is just hope isn’t it. It can’t really be explained, like positivity. I’m not hopeful that one day she’ll want, but I do hope that we’ll progress into a stage of Fidelity which hurts less than the current. Until I know what that demands from me, though, I’m unable to give myself to anyone else.

ζ

The Rebels say we are shaped by our experiences from the minute we are born, don’t they? My mother died in childbirth. Unusual for 2030 but she was anemic and they couldn’t pump blood into her as fast as she was losing it. I picture the circulatory of a waterfall, blood becoming blood becoming blood.

Oh look, here come our drinks. Yeah, they’re the more automated Specs, zooming past with the trays. I doubt they even pay them. Beautiful, aren’t they? And you won’t get a hangover. I’m glad you’re enjoying it. That’s the main reason Sphere gave them five stars. Did you notice the lights change? We’re now in the ‘purple phase’ of the night. Apparently they’ll release this lavender vapour that contains a mild intoxicant. That’s how the Spec at the bar put it. It’s included in the entry. Nothing to worry about, they said – you’ll still know where you are, but the world seems a bit lighter: jokes funnier, touch more tender.

Yes, Patience and I are exclusive. Well, I haven’t been intimate with her, but I haven’t been intimate with anyone else, either. I mimic her style of being despite not being an interpreter myself. What can I say? I am attracted to unearthly creatures, to ways of being that conflict with our natural behaviours.

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In order to explain what love meant to her, Patience told me a story about when a butterfly landed on her arm. The butterfly was bright orange with a damaged wing.

The butterfly doesn’t give love or have love; it just is love. Where life is, she said to me, love is. When the children are upset or afraid, I tell them about the robot that understands love. Even if she doesn’t feel it, she understands it. And that’s what I hold on for… I believe the boundaries between knowing something and feeling it are very fluid.

How are you feeling? Yeah, I’m different too. Must be the effects of the lavender haze. Surely it’s your turn soon. Wait – your eyes. Look up again, so the light catches.

There’s something… What did you say your name was? And you’ve been to one of these before? Right. Which section do you work in? Hmm. I don’t know it. Can I ask why your light is still green? I know the buzzer hasn’t gone yet but I’m beginning to feel unsettled.

What do you mean locked? Who are you? Show me your wrists. Reach one out to me. Let me touch it… Wait. Where’s your –

Eva Hibbs

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Paranoid Architecture (Cover Image) James Knight

46

Time Machine

When I’m in the time machine I like to imagine I’m in a boat underwater, underneath the surface, in my own boat, it’s quiet inside, as if everybody else is sleeping. Not tipping over or leaning to the side, I don’t believe it’s dangerous—I’m not thinking I’m going to leave, or I need to go away. Resting under the surface without landing anywhere or coming in for a landing, as if the water is a floor covered with cushions, it’s easy to imagine it’s not even moving. Inside the boat inside the water, enclosed in something that’s enclosed in something else, as if it’s double wrapped, and between the wraps bars of emptiness like the spaces in a birdcage. There are some keys in my drawers, I’m not sure what they open or what needs to be opened, or if there’s anything that opens, I don’t know if there’s something I don’t remember. Sometimes I think it’s the kind of vessel that holds more than you put into it. Outside it’s dark and also light, as if the darkness is lying inside the light, the same as it is inside. When you look through the window everything looks like it’s inside, it’s the type of window that brings everything in—you don’t even know what you’re going to see, as when you don’t even remember what you’ve forgotten. There aren’t any controls, or instruments, I think I expected this. It isn’t taking me anywhere in order to leave me there, or dropping me off anywhere, it’s easy to imagine everything is moving except you.

Peter Leight

47

The League

EXT. PARK – DUSK Two women fight in a shady grove.

The BLOND wears a jogging suit.

The BRUNETTE wears jeans and t-shirt.

Both women are in their early 30s. Both look like fit housewives -- except for their mad ninja skills. Striking, blocking, leaping, kicking. Against the background of old trees, they look like characters who stepped out of a crazy action flick.

Fist, foot, spin, snap! They move in acrobatic blurs, side-stepping, lunging. Faces set in fierce determination. The pace accelerates. They move in closer, bodies spinning, legs whipping, heads ducking. Closer, faster, fists flying -Finally they connect in a blur of powerful punches, knocking each other into the air.

They fly back, each crashing into a tree trunk, sliding down to the grass. They crouch on their knees, exhausted. In pain but not defeated.

The BLOND wipes blood from her mouth.

The BRUNETTE pushes blood off her brow.

They glare at each other. Breathing hard. Rage building, muscles tensing. They're about to leap at each other -BOY: Mom? The women look up to see a 10 YEAR OLD BOY (blond) and a 9 YEAR OLD GIRL (brunette). He wears a "Rams" Little League jersey, she wears a "Lions" Little League jersey.

BOY: It’s getting dark.

GIRL: The Snack Stand closes soon.

The women, still breathing hard, turn back to each other.

BLOND: I know what I saw. It was a ball! We were robbed!

BRUNETTE: I know what I know. It was a strike! You got what you deserved!

The kids roll their eyes.

The two women tense up, eyes narrowing.

As the kids walk away, the women leap at each other. The kids walk on through the trees. Behind them, we hear the women fighting and grunting.

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BOY: I hear you're a Trekkie. I'm into Star Wars.

GIRL: That's cool, too. Live long and prosper, you know?

Dusky gold sunlight streams through the trees. They pass another small clearing.

TWO FATHERS, in shorts, t-shirts and baseball caps, duke it out in the background.

FATHER #1: He was safe!

FATHER #2: He was out!

The boy and girl stop and watch.

The men hit like fighters in a Rocky movie, fast, furious punches, knocking each other back and forth around the clearing as if around a boxing ring.

BOY: Was it like this last season? I can’t remember.

GIRL: I don’t know. It’s like this all the time now. Whatever.

The kids watch a few more punches, then move on, leaving the battling men behind.

As they walk, the boy suddenly puts his arm out, stopping the girl. He points to where she was about to step.

GIRL: Thanks.

She steps around the spot.

They reach another clearing.

Here a young man (THE COACH) and a YOUNG WOMAN battle with baseball bats. The Coach wears a "Lions" jersey. On each side of the clearing, a baby stroller has been parked, babies tucked peacefully inside, asleep.

The kids stop and watch.

WOMAN: I paid for those goddamn uniforms!

COACH: And the Robersons paid to have the field resurfaced! And the Washingtons paid for the new scoreboard!

WOMAN: My son should be pitching!

COACH: Your son should be a water boy!

The man and woman use the bats like expert lightsabre warriors, striking, pounding, blocking, spinning. The racket -- CRACK, CRACK, CRACK -- disturbs one of the babies.

The girl kneels by the stroller and places a calming hand on the baby's head. The baby eases back to sleep.

The boy and girl watch the fight for a few more seconds, then move on, leaving the grown-ups behind. The girl stops to pick some flowers. The boy bends down and picks up some rocks.

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BOY: Hey! An arrowhead!

He dusts off a small rock and places it in the palm of his hand. Both gaze down at the old arrowhead, still sharp.

GIRL: I like arrowheads.

BOY: Really? I like flowers.

GIRL: Really?

BOY: You know, you're OK. For a girl.

GIRL: You're OK, too. For a boy.

Walking on, they reach another clearing.

A DOZEN PARENTS wrestle on the ground, a tangled knot of raging human flesh. They wear "Lions" and "Rams" jerseys.

The kids stop and watch.

The parents fight with vicious energy. They rip each other's Little League jerseys off, screaming, tackling. Within seconds they’re half naked and very bloody.

GIRL: Is that going to be us one day?

BOY: (certain) We’ll never be like that. Parents are crazy.

GIRL: (less so) Yeah.

The kids watch, then walk on. They reach the edge of the trees. Down below, the baseball field shines in the setting sun. A small wood building stands out there: The Snack Stand. It looks like the New World in a sea of grass.

DOZENS OF KIDS, wearing jerseys emblazoned with both the Lions and the Rams, cluster around the snack stand.

The boy and girl pause in the shade, smiling. Suddenly, the boy slaps his pockets.

BOY: Oh, crap!

GIRL: What?

BOY: I forgot to ask mom for money!

The girl pulls a few dollar bills and coins from her pocket. She holds the money out to the boy.

GIRL: I got enough for both of us.

BOY: Really?

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GIRL: Why not?

The boy hesitates, then shrugs and takes some of the money.

BOY: Why not? Thanks.

They start walking.

BOY: I'm getting strawberry taffy.

GIRL: Gross. I'm a licorice girl.

BOY: Or maybe cotton candy.

GIRL: Can't go wrong with cotton candy.

BOY: You can say that again.

GIRL: Can't go wrong with cotton candy.

They walk from under the trees, out of the shade and into the gold dusk, heading down the grassy slope toward the field.

Charles Duffie

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There was no dance from which we were absent Clare O Hagan

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i keep thwarting the witch

the witch snatches a pact from my lips when the pills fall out: nothing is impossible, she promises, when she can include the hypothetical blood of my firstborn child in the cauldron. choose your version of the american dream-minus one blue-eyed brat, she snickers, shoving a box of tissues in my direction. she expects the fat tears and wails that her victims usually produce. i hope i seem stoically resigned instead of coronated as the trickster in this fairy tale. the witch becomes more interested in my love life than my own mother. she scours my text conversations for potential, flits over lunches i eat with harmless boys without offering a second date, watches me delete my tinder. the witch howls: why don’t you ever pluck them up? the witch whines: you are turning into an old maid. when i go home for family christmas, she joins the chorus of relatives wondering why i haven’t brought a nice guy to join us this year. if i actually wanted a man, her constant closeness would start to chafe. the witch eventually catches on to my deception. i’m frankly shocked that it took her this long; she’s frankly taking the news differently than i expected. then again, you can’t count on witches to fulfill your expectations. she laughs: chuckles, not cackles, and reaches towards me with a crystal protruding from her clenched fist like a sixth finger, like a twisted opalescent offering. you could be one of us, she suggests. and then, more like herself: not that i care either way. you’re doing just fine, being a trickster.

M.P. Armstrong

53

Lion Leaf

The fire burns low and Eileen Tansland watches the back gate, to see who the world will spit forth. Today it is a man, who comes tittuping down the steps, pale and plump in the dwindling light.

Eileen puts her teeth in and goes to the door. As the man nears the house, she sees how he has oozed into his shirt, his face smooth and round, as though all his worries have slid off elsewhere. Eileen straightens her teeth, beckoning for him to come inside. The man shuffles in the shadows, holding his breath, lowering his well ironed buttocks into a greasy, stained chair.

She shovels coal onto the fire and lifts the kettle to the stove, spooning tea into the most chipped cup she can find. The man takes it with fat, grasping hands, and drinks. Loud, rhythmic slurps. When he has finished, Eileen reclaims the cup and gazes randomly into the tea leaves.

“I see four women,” she begins. A vein pulses in the man’s neck and Eileen wagers that there are probably more.

“You are,” she says, “an incandescent flame, a shining light to which others are drawn.”

The man clears his throat. A gold chain peeps from his shirt. He will, thinks Eileen, have a middling sort of job, born into the tedium of a middle sort of life.

“Alas,” she says, “Lesser souls are leaching your strength. Your night time activities are wearing you thin.”

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The man balks. Buttons strain over his paunch. Eileen sees that in his eyes, she is a strange, old, sexless thing, missing only a wart or a forked tongue. She peers further into the cup.

“There is change ahead.”

The man sits up.

“A new home, far away. Blue seas and a yacht. A place where you will be understood. There is one there, a beautiful girl who would conquer your heart, but sadly, she is far too young.”

The man licks his lips. “Where?”

Eileen flicks through the New World Atlas in her mind. “Belize.”

The man frowns. He starts to speak, but Eileen has finished and waves him away.

Flustered, he digs into his pocket and three rumpled bank notes fall into her lap. Later, she will take them upstairs and put them under the bed.

It worries her sometimes, late at night, all the money she has amassed. She has not counted it for years, but she wonders when someone will come knocking at the door, asking questions, scouring the village for the black hole of cash.

For Eileen, life as a child had been little more than a steep, stony path, where she scrambled to keep up with those unaware of her presence. Then came the Whitsun Walks, the year she turned eight. The sun was hot. The hymns were long. As soon as she was free, she broke from the crowd and dashed through the fields, her white pinafore held out at the sides like a sail. Ignoring the cries, she dashed full pelt toward the canopy of trees. It was only as the grass folded beneath her and the ground gave way, that she remembered the ‘Cooking Pot’, the half sunken mine shaft, now a fetid hole of water, the sort of place, said the minister, where the devil might live.

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Water closed above her head. Tendrils of pondweed rose up to caress her from below. Amid the oily blackness, came gentle words in an unknown tongue. Time ebbed and flowed. Then the harsh grab of fingers as the minister hurled her, spluttering, to the grass. He studied her ungrateful, living face and froze. “Why child?” he whispered, “Are you still alive?”

Eileen did not know, and so Eileen Tansland the halfwit, the rattle brain, became Eileen Tansland, who breathed the devil’s breath and married the spirit of the Cooking Pot. Backs were turned. Years passed, and the village sprawled, large and bland. Cul-de-sacs squashed old paths, and when the villagers mourned what they had lost, Eileen, an unwashed relic from a mystical age, was suddenly reclaimed.

Solace was sought in her wizened face. Who was she to turn them away?

One day, when spring has washed the sky clean, a different sort of person turns up. A scrawny blonde, with tattoos and a townish look. She smiles, baring her teeth, and invites herself inside.

“Here,” she hands Eileen a box. “I’ve brought my own tea. I want you to use this.”

“Lion Leaf,” reads Eileen, holding the cardboard box to the light.

“That’s right,” the woman throws herself into a chair. “They don’t sell it round here.”

Eileen opens the lid and puts her nose to the leaves. “No,” she says, “I shouldn’t think they would.”

She observes the woman as the kettle boils. Her bare inner arms, Eileen sees, are punctured and scarred. Her eyes have a dull sheen, and her skin a thin, jaundiced

56

look. Fearful for the money under the bed, she pours water onto the fat, tawny leaves, and watches as they unfurl and bloom, filling the air with a pungent scent.

“No milk,” says the woman, bouncing her foot.

Eileen stirs the tea and sits down. The woman unhooks her jaw, pouring the liquid straight back.

“My favourite,” she says, smacking her lips. “I find that for future-past clarity, this one is the best.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s what I like to use, when I read the leaves.”

“An unusual choice,” Eileen keeps her face very still.

The woman shrugs, and thrusts out her cup. “Not for me. I’ve read all my life, and this one is good. But I won’t read for myself. I won’t touch the abyss.”

Eileen considers the butchered arms, the body spent before its time.

“Well get on with it,” the woman snaps.

Eileen gazes into the dregs. The leaves have congealed into a thick, solid mass. Her heart starts to pound.

“Just relax,” the woman sighs, “and the pictures will come.”

Eileen does not trust the jut of the woman’s chin. She stares and stares at the leaves, whilst checking for the poker, in its place, by her leg.

“I see a tall building with a locked door. Rows of cells along each wall” “For God’s sake,” says the woman. “Even the bus driver clocked that.”

Eileen starts again. “I see welcome darkness. A deep yearning, blissful oblivion.”

The woman’s eyes harden. “Not clever. Move on.”

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Eileen swallows and straightens her teeth. In all these years, she has only been caught out once, by Nellie Crawford from Cadmeon’s Green. But that was when Eileen was young and strong, and could dispense a clog footed adversary into the Cooking Pot with one swift crack.

The woman grows impatient, wraith like in the fire light. Eileen almost misses the letters, KYRA or KYLA, etched into her neck.

She tilts the cup, “Well, there could be a child. A little girl. About four years old?”

“Go on.”

“I see legal papers,” says Eileen, “A very long day.”

“Oh shut up. Just say where she is, and don’t lie.”

The swell of leaves has glued itself to the cup, reminding Eileen of a yellow lino she once had. People who adopt, she thinks, will have money to spare, and live in mock Tudor houses to prove they’re not odd. Not local, nor too far away.

“Cheshire,” proclaims Eileen. “Tarporley. Is that a place?”

The woman thinks but does not speak. Eileen burns under her glare “Alright,” knifelike the woman jumps up. “My turn. You read for me, now I’ll read for you.”

Eileen opens her mouth.

“Fair’s fair,” says the woman. “I can’t pay. I insist.”

Eileen watches, as the woman lifts the kettle to the stove and spoons Lion Leaf into a large cup. Eileen sips, and the foul yellow liquid cloys at her throat. When she has finished , the woman snatches the dregs, holding the cup close to her chest. Her breathing slows; it seems she has entered a meditative state.

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“You bloody old witch,” the woman snaps her head up, her eyes sharp dots of light.

Eileen heart thumps against her ribs. The woman grabs the poker and thrusts it into the flames.

“I knew it. I knew you lied. The only real thing you’ve ever done was fall down a hole.”

Yet, thinks Eileen, the money is real. The room grows cold. The woman moves closer, and Eileen senses the gathering abyss, the taste of dark water, the deep velvet calm. She is not, she thinks, afraid of death.

Just then, there comes a banging at the door. “‘Miss Tansland,” bawls a young voice. “Help me, a double reading, quick.”

“Sod off,” the woman shouts, so skeletal, that she is hardly a woman, hardly human at all.

“Stay,” Eileen hears her own voice. “Have a room, a bed. Take the money if you want.”

The woman throws Eileen a curious look, and for a moment, Eileen sees the person she might once have been. Then the banging resumes and the voice starts again.

Eileen starts to rise from the chair, but the woman shoves her back with a dangerous grin.

“Sit,” says the woman, “Today, I will read.”

Carolyn Stockdale

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Golden Poppies Angel La Canfora

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Host

Consider this: the host, the hyperscaler.

The server farm on the Eastern seaboard.

That piper-of-electrons-in and pumper-out of Cats That Look Like Hitler, PornHub, Facebook Live, Pewdiepie. Know its guilt: the shame of all the world. The deserts gave their sand for silicone; the sea gave fuel; the crust raised up capillaries of copper; the mantle yielded lithium and lead.

We’re all of us complicit: host, guest, God. At times like these, you control what you can.

Your molecules of water want to mourn so let them mourn. After all, everything here is from the ashes of the same supernova.

T.L. Evans

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Wednesday

There's something on your forehead, a blackened smudge filtering through punctured skin, entering the blood stream until your cuts and scrapes become Penance for forgotten sins and you sweat the sermons delivered in the precipices of your childhood.

Give us today our daily bread Forgive us our gluten intolerance Like a bartender who only serves true crime podcast theories or a stamp collector who collects other stamp collectors, habits reimagined still ask you to bear the same weight.

Deliver us from temptation Like a reverse Uber Eats The smudge is still there, bystanders can't see it nesting, in the coil of your skull, calcified, waiting to be exhumed and finally rest behind glass or stay dormant in the cave surrendering to the moss, never to be resurrected.

Jordan Hamel

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A Terrible Fascination Robin Anna Smith

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Sugar Daddy

I had to pay my way through college somehow. So when I saw the Sugar Babes workshop, I thought you know what? That could be a bit of fun. Don’t think of this as sex work, they said. You’re not an escort, you’re an entrepreneur. There’s no point in feminist whining. Use your assets to get ahead in life. Anyway, dating is expensive.

The clothes, the manicures, all that waxing, then you have to listen to some jerk talking about himself all evening, pay for your own drinks so he doesn’t get the wrong impression, and finally pay for your Uber home to stay safe. Yes, the ongoing maintenance costs of being a woman are very high. Not to mention, time is money!

Think of your hourly rate then think of how long it takes to get ready for a date. Men want a girl next door type, only upgraded. The no make-up look, that’s the hardest one to achieve, isn’t it? It costs a fortune and takes hours. Now, all of that is unpaid labour.

Why not be a sugar baby and get paid? You can pay off student debts, build up a deposit for a property. Get a head start in life. Well, I thought. They’re right. Isn’t that what college is all about? An investment in my future?

I met Howard in a bar. ‘Thank you answering my message,’ he said. He twisted his paper napkin around his fingers. ‘You’re studying marketing?’ This will be easy, I thought. Easier than sixty grand of debt. His pale skin gleamed in the low light. He smelt so good. Tasted good as well. I knew exactly what to do to please him, to tease him, to keep him wanting more. Keep him paying for more. With google, there’s no excuse for poor sexual skills nowadays. Research skills have always been one of my strengths.

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The trouble was I started to enjoy it. I know what they say: never mix business with pleasure, but I just couldn’t help myself. I’m ashamed to admit it, but Howard turned me on with his smooth, shiny bald head, his sleepy caramel eyes and his soft, comforting marshmallow tummy. He was so sweet, really he was. I loved the little noises he made when I kissed him on his neck, like the mewling of a kitten. And when I put my tongue in his ear he groaned and writhed around underneath me. At first I was careful. I took tiny little nibbles from the usual places, his neck, his shoulders, his inner thighs. He yelped and bucked, but he didn’t mind. Then I got more adventurous. I left bite marks. I licked his ears down to delicate little shells. I sucked on his belly and he was quite pleased to see it getting smaller and flatter, though I missed its squishiness. I perfected the art of the blow job thanks to a gay porn site and an experimental courgette. Always follow up your research with real-world development, that’s so important when launching a new product. Howard roared like a walrus, and soon I’d licked his delicious, shiny cock down to a sad little nub. Once I went to work on his feet and accidentally bit off one of his little toes. He was furious, so I ate the other one too.

Howard diminished in size as my bank balance grew. I asked him if he minded being shorter than me now, when we went out together, but he shook his head and gazed up at me adoringly. Then it got embarrassing. He was getting so small he could have been my younger brother. Then I had to wheel him around a pushchair. I accidentally left him outside a shop in the sun by mistake and when I came back he’d caramelised to a deep, translucent gold. Finally I left him in the breast pocket of my new leopard print shirt dress and put him in the wash by mistake. That was the end of poor Howard.

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Poor Howard? Ha! He’d left all his remaining money to a charity for orphaned street children in Brazil, hadn’t he? So selfish. Aren’t there enough poor people in our own country? Like me, for instance. And now my teeth are rotting. They have an unpleasant core of greyish brown, like something you find at the bottom of a kitchen bin. I’ll have to take out a loan for dental surgery, get some porcelain implants fitted.

No one wants a woman with brown teeth. Still, it’s important to make these capital investments. I’m thinking of diversifying my portfolio. I’ve heard you can get good money from Honey Bears.

Kate Tyte

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Prayer for my Fat Body

Lord, let me rest in my fatness. My body carries the fatigue of my mother’s mother: let me have it.

Let me hang my head low in my double-chin. Let my love handles bulge out of shirts like extra cheese.

Let these fat-folds roll over my body like waves.

Let my thighs blacken with friction. How like a fat dog my breath pants: allow me to half-breathe the air. Let my stomach jiggle like jelly when I walk.

Let little boys on bicycles snigger and call me a cow.

I don’t ask for buoyancy, lord. Give me strength to carry this heaviness. Let me not be dissonant with the needs of this body. Let my breasts sag and wither.

I am so tired of watching myself, lord. Let me live.

Kunjana Parashar

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Ligature Jay Snodgrass

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Alternative Mother #6 Pope Joan

Duos habet et bene pendentes* I learned the hard way the drawback of lacking a pair, not to have them dangling nicely.

After you dropped me on the street between the Vatican and Lateran Palace they tied you to your horse’s tail and dragged the life out of you.

They said you betrayed the Father of Fathers. They said you delivered a boy; but they thought you were a man, so what did they know?

They erased you from Church history, dismissed you as fiction and myth.

What need, then, to sit their new Pope on the dung chair with the holey seat, feel reassurance in the Papal plums.

Rachel Davies

* Two he has and they hang well

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The Waffle House

The waitress is a goddess.

The wounded eternal slouching half-attentive marble sculpture of daily life.

Not mythological – something to really believe in.

And it’s Sunday, how perfect.

Not swan-like, but craftsman she emerges from a curtain, walking to the beat of our morning regret; she grants us forgiveness with a cup of coffee and has an everywhere-presence, the way god is supposed to.

And that’s really all we need— not papers to analyze or a burning light, just someone who looks tired but still watches over our warm drink.

Alexandra Kulik

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Contributors

M.P. Armstrong is a student at Kent State University studying English and United States history. A native of Warren, Ohio, M.P. enjoys traveling, colorful blazers, and Netflix documentaries. M.P.’s work is published or forthcoming in Blue Marble Review, After the Pause, honey & lime, and others.

Kendall Babl is a sculptor, musician, arborist, and writer who has exhibited work internationally. He has been published in Kipseli and Sound Sculpture and is the founder of the art agency BU-CON which can be found at bucon.earth.

Rachel Davies’s work has appeared in online and print journals and anthologies. Her poetry has won prizes in competitions. She co-ordinates the Poetry Society Stanza for East Manchester and Tameside and is on the organising committee of Manchester’s Poets & Players. She has an MA in Creative Writing from MMU and has recently completed work for a PhD. You can follow her blog, ‘Poetry, PhD and Life’, at racheld1607.com Karen Dennison is a poet and amateur photographer/artist. She has had work exhibited at the University of Essex, by Slackspace Colchester and HOFS Artist Book Fair. She collaborated with poet Abegail Morley on her poetry pamphlet The Memory of Water (Indigo Dreams) and her photographs feature on the cover and inside. She coedits and designs for Against the Grain Poetry Press. Her second poetry collection, The Paper House, was published by Hedgehog Press in 2019.

Charles Duffie is a writer working in the Los Angeles area. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review of Books, Anastamos, Bacopa Literary Review,

Prime Number Magazine, Exposition Review, Mojave River Press, Meat for Tea, Heavy Feather Review, FlashBack Fiction, and American Fiction by New Rivers Press.

T.L. Evans lives in Hertfordshire with his wife and three kids. He writes poems on his phone on his commute to London, typically embracing themes such as “commuting” and “London”. He placed third in the 2016 National Poetry Competition and his Commended entry in the Verve Competition 2018 was described by his poetry hero Luke Kennard as “annoyingly well crafted.”

Hedy Habra has authored three poetry collections, most recently, The Taste of the Earth (Press 53 2019). Tea in Heliopolis won the USA Best Book Award and was finalist for the International Book Award, and Under Brushstrokes was finalist for the USA Best Book Award and the International Book Award. Her story collection, Flying Carpets, won the Arab American Book Award’s Honorable Mention and was finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award. Her website is hedyhabra.com

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Jordan Hamel (he/him/his) is a Pōneke-based poet and performer. He grew up in the south on a diet of Catholicism and masculine emotional repression. He is the 2018 New Zealand Poetry Slam Champion and has performed at festivals across Aotearoa.

He has work published or forthcoming in Mimicry, Sweet Mammalian, Blackmail Press, Salty, Solid Air (University of Queensland Press), The Speculative Book 2019 (United Kingdom), Kissing Dynamite (USA) and elsewhere An Englishman living in Houston, Texas, Elliot Harper is author of the upcoming novella The City around the World to be released by Sinister Stoat Press (imprint of Weasel press.) and a bloke with a ginger beard who writes speculative and weird fiction. Find him on Twitter @e_harper_author and at his website elliotharper.com.

Eva Hibbs is a writer of fiction, plays and poetry, living in south-east London. Her work has been published in The Irish Literary Review, The Oxonian Review and her plays have been performed at The Pleasance Theatre (Islington and Edinburgh). Her writing challenges notions of normalcy, engaging with gender, sexuality and spirituality. Having recently finished her short story collection, she will start work on a novel and strive to spread the non-robotic, universal love.

Poppy Jennings is a writer, artist and currently studying for her English Literature Master’s at Cardiff University. She has previously been published in Lucent Dreaming Magazine and Quench Magazine.

James Knight is an experimental poet and digital artist. Void Voices, a reimagining of Dante’s Inferno, was published in 2018 by Hesterglock Press.

Website: thebirdking.com. Twitter: @badbadpoet.

Alexandra Kulik is a multi-media artist living in Denver, where she works with traumatized youth. Her poetic works can be found in various places online and in print.

Angel La Canfora is an award-winning photographer, mosaic artist, musician and poet from Los Angeles. Her photos have been featured in numerous publications and websites over the years, including the Columbia Journalism Review, Money and the LA Times. Learn more about Angel's work and her upcoming exhibition at her homepage: lacanforaas.wixsite.com/angellacanfora Peter Leight lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. He has previously published poems in Paris Review, AGNI, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, FIELD, and other magazines.

Sara Rose Lieto is a writer based in Cambridge, MA. Her work has recently appeared in an issue of The Mantle. You can find her online at sararoselieto.com.

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V.C. McCabe is the author of the forthcoming collection Give the Bard a Tetanus Shot (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2019). Her poetry was recently in an ekphrastic exhibit at FRANK Gallery in Chapel Hill, N.C. and the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Museum & Library's So It Goes journal. Her work has appeared in Poet Lore, Prairie Schooner, The Minnesota Review, Five:2:One, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Entropy, and elsewhere. She has lived in Ireland, England, and West Virginia. Find her online at vcmccabe.com and @vcmpoetry on Twitter.

Jennifer Metsker’s poetry has been published in Beloit, Birdfeast, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Southern Review, The Seattle Review, Rhino and many other journals.

Her audio poetry has been featured regularly on the BBC Radio program Short Cuts.

Irish born Clare O Hagan is an award winning visual artist and filmmaker who lives in London. The artist creates artworks ambitious in scale and concept, conveying complex aspects of the world she inhabits. O Hagan utilizes a variety of media which include printmaking, altered art, assemblage, still photography, film and moving image. In addition to working independently, Clare O Hagan is one half of Wyllie O Hagan, a unique artistic partnership with Denise Wyllie. wyllieohagan.com Sasha Ockenden studied French & German literature at the University of Oxford, where one of his stories was published in the Failed Novelists Society's 'Failed Anthology' and he won an international DAAD prize for creative writing in German.

Another of his flash fiction pieces is scheduled to be published in Flash Flood on National Flash Fiction Day 2019. He is currently based in Berlin and still working on becoming a failed novelist.

Mollie O’Leary received a B.A. from Kenyon College where she studied English and Philosophy. Her poems have been previously published or are forthcoming in HIKA, Persimmon, and Cathexis Northwest Press. She grew up in Massachusetts and is currently an English teacher in Texas.

Ken O’Steen’s fiction has appeared, or is forthcoming in Cleaver, Switchback, Blue

Lake Review, Litro, The Wolfian, Connotation Press, ELM, Adelaide, Litbreak, Scarlet Leaf Review, Literary Juice, Flash Fiction Magazine, Fiction Week Literary Review and others. “Godsent Vermin,” was nominated by the editors of Sleet Magazine for a Best of the Net Award. Ken is from Los Angeles, and currently lives in Vermont.

Kunjana Parashar is a poet from Mumbai who holds an MA in English Literature from Mumbai University. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Hellebore, Barren Magazine, The Bombay Literary Magazine, an anthology of poems and essays by Airplane Poetry Movement (Bombaykala Books, 2019), Eastlit and Verse of Silence.

You can find her on Twitter @wolfwasp.

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Clifton Redmond is a student at Carlow College St. Patrick's. His work has appeared in various online and print journals and has been placed in various competitions and awards. He is also a member of the Carlow Writers' Co-operative.

Judith R. Robinson is a visual artist, editor, fiction writer and poet. A 1980 summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, she is listed in the Directory of American Poets and Writers. She has published 75+ poems, five poetry collections, one fiction collection; one novel; edited or co-edited eleven poetry collections. She teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Her newest collection, Carousel, was published in January, 2017 by Lummox Press.

Robin Anna Smith (she/her/Mx) is an award-winning, Pushcart-nominated writer and visual artist. Her work, which appears in numerous journals and anthologies, focuses on disability, gender, and trauma, as well as systems from a neurodiverse perspective.

Her mini-chap Systems Askew is forthcoming. Robin is the founding and chief editor for Human/Kind Journal and an associate editor at Yavanika Press. She is more of a cats, dogs, and unicorns person than a people person.

Jay Snodgrass’s asemic work has appeared most recently in LockJaw Magazine, Big Bridge and Diode.

Lannie Stabile was a finalist for the 2019/2020 Glass Chapbook Series and semifinalist for the Button Poetry 2018 Chapbook Contest. Works can be found, or are forthcoming, in Kissing Dynamite, Monstering, The Ginger Collect, The Hellebore, Honey & Lime, and more. Lannie currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Barren Magazine. Twitter handle: @LanniePenland Carolyn Stockdale is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University. She has a particular interest in stories which are inspired by the landscape of the North of England. Her first published short story, 'Water Vein', is due to appear in Dark Lane Anthology Volume 8, later this year.

Kate Tyte was born in Bath, studied English literature and worked as an archivist for ten years. She now lives in Lisbon where she is an English teacher. She is a regular contributor of essays to Slightly Foxed magazine and her fiction been published on The Fiction Pool and STORGY. Daniel Warner lives in Marietta, Ga. He is the author of the chapbook Woke (Ghost City Press) and has poetry in Pretty Owl, Rust + Moth, and others.

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Jane Wheeler works with words and images, often using both to make one-off, folded books. She lives in North Norfolk, is inspired by the details of the coastal landscape, its people and its flora and fauna. She recently won third prize in the Rialto/RSPB's Nature and Place competition; her poems are published in The Rialto, Tears in the Fence, Reliquiae and other magazines.

Mathew Yates is a queer, disabled poet from Kentucky. His work can be found in

Kissing Dynamite Poetry, HumanKind Journal, Rhythm & Bones Lit, Epigraph Mag, and more.

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ISSUE #27 COMING NOVEMBER 2019

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